Table Talk: Week of March 18, 2018

Whether or not your children were able to make it to Sunday school, you can still engage them in this week’s story. Please read the summary, look up the story online, in your bible, or a children’s bible, and begin the discussion. Increasing your child’s biblical knowledge will be foundational in their faith development. What a gift to provide a child! Adults also reap the benefit of digging in deeper to these stories.

Muscle Memory & The 5th Sunday in Lent

We are constantly learning. There is a need to practice what we learn to become better. The more we practice, the easier a skill becomes. We also know what it’s like to memorize something and know it “by heart”. Sometimes we teach our bodies to do an action without even thinking about it – such as clapping. Sometimes we practice something over and over (such as the Lord’s Prayer) – soon, we know it by heart.

In biblical times, people believed that the heart controlled the movements of the body, the place that controlled a person’s feelings and where wisdom was stored.

Jeremiah said that one day God would make a new covenant with Judah. A covenant is a holy promise. He taught that God’s new covenant could not be broken by people. This new covenant would not be written on stone tablets like the Ten Commandments. It would be written on people’s hearts.

In our 1st & 2nd grade classroom and our prek/k classrooms we focused on the season of Lent and anticipating Easter.

Remind children that Lent is the season that we prepare for Easter. We move toward Easter by hearing stories of Christ’s journey towards the cross and resurrection.

We first reviewed stories from last week about Christ as a newborn child, how Jesus was lost and found and then the One who was baptized and blessed.

Today, we will continue the stories of Jesus going to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, Jesus as a healer and parable maker, and offering the bread and wine.

Table Talk Questions

3rd – 5th grade questions

How is a covenant (in biblical times) different from a contract or promise today?

What is God’s new covenant?

Why do you think God might want to write on our hearts?

1st & 2nd Grade questions / PreK/K

Jesus went to the desert to discover more about who he was and what his work was going to be. What do you think he work was?